BackPacker wrote:
The aim should be to reduce R to a very low number ASAP (R < 0.3 or something like that) to halt the spread right now. In the long run, we need to apply measures to keep R<1. Although much of the predictive data is still guesswork, at least it gives people the reasons behind the combination of measures that are taken. And that makes it more likely that people will follow them.
China demonstrated that you can achieve R = 0.0 in 10 weeks but that took all of country resources and they have no exit path yet?
The reality is without active and regular testing it will be difficult to control R near 0.99 whatever combination of measures, in the blind you will either have R=0 or R=3, “the hammer” needs drastic measures including symbolic ones that have a high public resonance but doubtful effectiveness just to support effective measures, while “the dance” would seem like doing nothing in terms of numbers
Not sure if other countries can achieve R=0.0 or even R<1.0, this is yet to be tested, regrettably I doubt this will ever happen looking how the topic is lightly taken by the general public and business, especially in the UK, there still a general sentiment that Wuhan/Italy were exceptions or mistakes rather than a dire look into the future…
I wouldn’t trust the figures and reports coming out of China.
That’s very positive MedEwok, do you think it is the calm before the storm or hopefully that measures are being effective in your local area.?
The director of the Mario Negri institute for pharmacological research, Giuseppe Remuzzi, is saying here (at 4:40) that they had been seeing this pneumonia, affecting especially old people, in Italy since October 2019:
Interesting video. If correct, it would at least party explain the dramatic situation in Italy, as in this case the country would be a couple of months ahead of the rest of Europe. Given the intensive interchange between northern Italy and China, that sounds plausible. Doesn’t bode well for the rest of Europe and the US, however.
Not a surprise that 2/3 of critically ill patients are overweight when 2/3 of the population are overweight.
I can’t follow the video, but the idea that it was already present in October sounds unlikely to me. The RNA sequencing done suggests that the strains of virus in Wuhan all originated from a common ancestor in late November or December.
You might argue that the first case in Wuhan originated from Italy, but then why would the first major outbreak have started in Wuhan rather than Italy?
We still haven’t had our first case here yet. Everybody is paranoid and every morning I come in to be told ’it’s finally here’ or that a patient died of a convincing sounding sudden respiratory illness the previous night. But when the results come back it turns out to be influenza or some other respiratory virus. I think that’s human nature.
In France there are many studies initiated and on-going with chloroquine with good results. They started to investigate this before trumps shout this to everyone. But actually it seems to take a good route. Several doctors are allowed to give it to some ill people, and in indeed accelerate the recovery. There is nothing about test on severe cases.
I also included the UK and Germany. Germany appears to be later than the UK, but otherwise they are very similar, and much closer to Italy than S Korea, except maybe the last 2-3 days, particularly for the rate of increase. No sense in linear graphs anymore, so switched to logarithmic. Funny how Italy shows a truly perfect exponential increase after 5 days. This can (IMO) only be caused by letting the virus operate freely, or else there would have been some deviation from the curve.
@kwlf I think orgin of the virus is well established, it was even predicted in Guangdong or Hubei, turns out to be the latter
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6466186/
Note that in Mar19, the virus was not even transmitted to humans but it was expected in some future, while the virus has surprised everybody by it’s quick mutation, that double edge can be both good & bad, so hopfully down same path as SARS
@LeSving, in your latest graph it seems that Sweden and Denmark now have negative speeds? That doesn’t seem possible. Is it an artifact of the calculations?
